Materializing A Palace In The Himalayas
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Yogananda, Paramahansa
“‘With my own eyes I have seen the conqueror of death.’ Maitra, 34-12 one of the group, spoke reverently. His face was transfigured with the joy of his recent awakening. ‘The supreme guru played with time and space, as a child plays with bubbles. I have beheld one with the keys of heaven and earth.’
“I soon returned to Danapur. Firmly anchored in the Spirit, again I assumed the manifold business and family obligations of a householder.”
Lahiri Mahasaya also related to Swami Kebalananda and Sri Yukteswar the story of another meeting with Babaji, under circumstances which recalled the guru’s promise: “I shall come whenever you need me.”
“The scene was a Kumbha Mela at Allahabad,” Lahiri Mahasaya told his disciples. “I had gone there during a short vacation from my office duties. As I wandered amidst the throng of monks and sadhus who had come from great distances to attend the holy festival, I noticed an ash-smeared ascetic who was holding a begging bowl. The thought arose in my mind that the man was hypocritical, wearing the outward symbols of renunciation without a corresponding inward grace.
“No sooner had I passed the ascetic than my astounded eye fell on Babaji. He was kneeling in front of a matted-haired anchorite.
“‘Guruji!’ I hastened to his side. ‘Sir, what are you doing here?’
“‘I am washing the feet of this renunciate, and then I shall clean his cooking utensils.’ Babaji smiled at me like a little child; I knew he was intimating that he wanted me to criticize no one, but to see the Lord as residing equally in all body-temples, whether of superior or inferior men. The great guru added, ‘By serving wise and ignorant sadhus, I am learning the greatest of virtues, pleasing to God above all others-humility.’”
34-1: Now a military sanatorium. By 1861 the British Government had already established certain telegraphic communciations.
34-2: Ranikhet, in the Almora district of United Provinces, is situated at the foot of Nanda Devi, the highest Himalayan peak (25,661 feet) in British India.
34-3: “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.”- Mark 2:27.
34-4: The karmic law requires that every human wish find ultimate fulfillment. Desire is thus the chain which binds man to the reincarnational wheel.
34-5:
“What is a miracle?-’Tis a reproach, ’Tis an implicit satire on mankind.” -Edward Young, in Night Thoughts.
34-6: The theory of the atomic structure of matter was expounded in the ancient Indian Vaisesika and Nyaya treatises. “There are vast worlds all placed away within the hollows of each atom, multifarious as the motes in a sunbeam.” -Yoga Vasishtha.
34-7: Physical, mental, and spiritual suffering; manifested, respectively, in disease, in psychological inadequacies or “complexes,” and in soul-ignorance.
34-8: Chapter II:40.
34-9: A town near Benares.
34-10: In the path to the Infinite, even illumined masters like Lahiri Mahasaya may suffer from an excess of zeal, and be subject to discipline. In the Bhagavad Gita, we read many passages where the divine guru Krishna gives chastisement to the prince of devotees, Arjuna.
34-11: A porridge made of cream of wheat fried in butter, and boiled with milk.
34-12: The man, Maitra, to whom Lahiri Mahasaya is here referring, afterward became highly advanced in self-realization. I met Maitra shortly after my graduation from high school; he visited the Mahamandal hermitage in Benares while I was a resident. He told me then of Babaji’s materialization before the group in Moradabad. “As a result of the miracle,” Maitra explained to me, “I became a lifelong disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya.”